{"id":8321,"date":"2025-02-19T14:52:39","date_gmt":"2025-02-19T20:52:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/kierkegaard\/?page_id=8321"},"modified":"2025-02-19T14:52:39","modified_gmt":"2025-02-19T20:52:39","slug":"living-for-today-student-blog","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/kierkegaard\/living-for-today-student-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"Living for Today"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Living for Today: Kierkegaard’s “The Lily and the Bird” on the necessity of winter<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

By Grace Heinz ’25<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Winter is a difficult, frustrating time for many. Especially at Saint Olaf, where the winds on the hill blow 50 miles per hour and the snow stings your face. Almost everyone I know absolutely despises the months of January and February. It is the era of J-term; short days, grueling nights. Bundling up and wearing five layers to go to the dining hall. It\u2019s bleak, it\u2019s grey, it\u2019s depressing. It\u2019s also absolutely necessary. This is something I\u2019ve contemplated more and more through my years at Saint Olaf. I am always wishing winter away, but I ask myself who I would be without these long months. I\u2019ve come to learn and begrudgingly accept that winter is essential to spring, that we can\u2019t enjoy beautiful sunny days without the dreary, cloudy ones. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was, in fact, during the bleak month of January that I read something pertaining to this sentiment. Soren Kierkegaard\u2019s The Lily and the Bird <\/em>is a treatise on the importance of the present moment. In this work Kierkegaard writes of the lily of the field and the bird of the air, two beings which he considers exemplary of leading a joyful life. He writes that \u201cthe lily and the bird, the joyful teachers of joy, who, precisely because they are unconditionally joyful<\/em>, are joy itself.\u201d It is precisely because they live in the joy of today and want for so little that they experience such happiness. The lily, for example, who \u201cknows that [Spring] will come at the appointed time; it knows that it would not benefit in any way whatsoever if it were permitted to determine the seasons of the year. It does not say, \u2018When will we get rain?\u2019 or \u2018When will we have sunshine? Or \u2018Now we have had too much rain,\u2019 or \u2018Now it is too hot.\u2019\u2026no, it keeps silent and waits.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is in the waiting that we forget the joy in today. As I grit my teeth and leave my dorm in apprehension, wishing that the snow would just melt already, I am ignoring today, <\/em>the most important day of my life. If I can only be happy when the sun is out and everything is perfect, then I am like the \u201cperson whose joy is dependent upon certain conditions [who] is not himself joyful\u201d. I am forgetting the unshakeable eternal summer within myself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hardship, turmoil, darkness, winter\u2014 all undeniable aspects of life which, when we are faced with them, we should not shun. They are precisely the forces that help us grow and evolve. They teach us to be kinder friends, attentive students, and compassionate community members. The winter of our lives is the very season that makes the summer possible. Of course, a part of me still desperately wants it to be May, to see the world come back into bloom. But I can\u2019t forget the everlasting bloom within me and the people around me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Grace Heinz is a senior French & Philosophy double major at St. Olaf. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Living for Today: Kierkegaard’s “The Lily and the Bird” on the necessity of winter By Grace Heinz ’25 Winter is a difficult, frustrating time for many. Especially at Saint Olaf, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7797,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-8321","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/kierkegaard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/kierkegaard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/kierkegaard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/kierkegaard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7797"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/kierkegaard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8321"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/kierkegaard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8327,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/kierkegaard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8321\/revisions\/8327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/kierkegaard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}